When I look at the various state gaming commission reports, I see "hold percentages" on table games in the 20+ percent range. Some of the reports breakout blackjack hold statistics, and those percentages are also in the 10 - 20% range.
How does this hold percentage reconcile to the house advantage? If the HE on a game of blackjack is .7% (assuming perfect basic strategy), how can that possibly translate to a hold percentage that is so high? What am I missing here?
Hold=win/drop. In table games, the chips that go out divided by the dollars taken in. IMO, it's a meaningless number. Only reason they use it is because it's really the only number they can calculate.
"I don't think outside the box; I think of what I can do with the box." - Henri Matisse
What you are missing is that the "hold" and the HE would be identical if everyoneOriginally Posted by Bigdaddy
played one hand and one hand only (while playing perfect Basic Strategy).
The reality is that most of a casino's patrons will play until their wallet is empty,
while a rather small number will quit while they are ahead.
When the Blackjack "hold" is broken down further into sub types, the figures get
very interesting, e.g. For Spanish21 the hold tends to be around 36% !
The Nevada and Atlantic City BJ holds tend to hover around 12% !
The Money wheel is usually around 49% !
The Baccarat hold is extremely variable and can range very far indeed.
Hold basically means how much of your money they hold on to (keep) when you buy in. ("You" being general.)
For instance, 3 people buy in for $100 each. One person leaves the table with $130, another with $20, and another with $40, then the casino profited $110. The hold would be 110/300 = 36%.
Hold can be negative: 3 people buy in for $100. One leaves with $150, another $120, and another $90. Table lost $60. -60/300 = -20%.
Hold can also exceed 100%, because people can bring chips from one table to another. Chips brought to a table are not tracked in the hold calculation, only the % of money that the table keeps. 3 people buy in for $100 each, and another comes to the table with $1,000 in chips. The 3 guys leave with $100, $20, and $140 each. The guy who came with $1,000 (in chips) loses it all. Casino won $1,040. 1040/300 = 346%.
Used an example of 3 people in those examples for ease -- but there are obviously many more players than that.
"Everyone wants to be rich, but nobody wants to work for it." -Ryan Howard [The Office]
Back in the early/mid eighties, Nevada blackjack hold percentages were in the 18 % range. Average players were worse at the time and played to say around a 2.5 % disadvantage.
Example -
Player buys in for $100; dealer slides the $100 bill into the "drop box". Average player would place total bets of around 7X his buy in amount. Player makes total bets of $700 at a 2.5% disadvantage and loses $17.50. House wins $ 17.50 or 17.5 % of "drop".
As Flash said, Nevada & AC blackjack holds are now in the 12 % range. Players now play closer to basic strategy than in the past.
Yes - thanks. As I was finishing my post, the light bulb was starting to go on that I was missing the volume-of-action factor. For instance, If I buy in for $1,000 and play for 300 rounds at an average bet of $100 per round, then house would expect to win $210 (300 rounds x $100 average bet x .7% HE). So the hold in this case would be $210/$1,000 = 21%.So the hold percentage basically reflects the combination of how much people are betting and how long they playing. So it appears that the average joe tends to play long enough to let the HE grind away about 20% of their buy-in.
As they make games tougher by raising HE the only repeat customers will be ones that learn to play better which decreases the net win per person as well as the number of people coming to the casino. Obviously this is a poor business model. It is no wonder the casinos are struggling.
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